After the Schumanns moved to Dusseldorf towards the end of his life, Schumann became interested in the musical forms of the Catholic church, and the Mass and the Requiem also satisfied the streak of mysticism that was present throughout his life, though in greater or lesser proportions depending upon circumstances.

Like Mozart, he was composing a Mass for the dead during a time of illness and other hardships, and he expressed his fears that it was his own Requiem that he was writing. During Schumann's stay in the asylum after his suicide attempt, this was one of the compositions that he continued to work upon. The manuscripts show numerous revisions, far more so than in most earlier manuscripts, indicating his struggles to adequately capture his musical ideas and suggesting his mental agitation. Most of the writing is introverted (as in the Requiem for Mignon); the images are not of a priest celebrating the Requiem Mass, but of a man contemplating his own death.

It was not published or performed until eight years after his death, and today is one of Schumann's more neglected works, though critics vary in their opinions about how justified this neglect is. He did not exercise his gift for musical innovation, and in fact, much of it looks backwards. The Domine Jesu Christe and the Sanctus reflect Bach's influence, in the way that fugues dominate these sections, and the opening of the Agnus Dei, with its plaintive use of the strings to suggest an almost overwhelming, uncomprehending grief, suggests the opening of Mozart's Requiem. Again like the Requiem for Mignon, it uses the solo voices sparingly, except for the Qui Mariam absolvisti section of the Ingemisco, which has a limpid melodiousness reminiscent of his lieder.

However, there are also sections that show he was still capable of a poetic musical expressiveness, if not vibrant new creativity. The Sanctus is appropriately majestic and stately, and the Dies irae, though taking a more internalized approach than Verdi's terrifying writing in his own Requiem Mass, evokes the same sense of fear of the inevitable Day of Judgment.

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